The Future of Consumerist

Over the last twelve years, Consumerist has been a steadfast proponent and voice on behalf of consumers, from exposing shady practices by secretive cable companies to pushing for action against dodgy payday lenders. Now, we’re joining forces with Consumer Reports, our parent organization, to cultivate the next generation of consumer advocacy.

Stay tuned as Consumerist’s current and future content finds its home as a part of the Consumer Reports brand. In the meantime, you can access existing Consumerist content below, and we encourage you to visit Consumer Reports to read the latest consumer news.

As we mentioned yesterday in our completely unscientific taste test of the KFC Double Down, we were really just tagging along with our smarter sibling Consumer Reports as they gathered their team to pull some major science on the bacon-and-cheese-between-two-pieces-of-fried-chicken sandwich-ish type thing.

And so the CR testers piled into the van yesterday and drove to the local KFC, where they picked up several bags of the belly busting Double Downs — and tested them right away in the back of the van, so as to sample them right off the grill (or out of the microwave, or however KFC heats them up).

Unlike Consumerist’s instant-gratification “tastes good to mah belly” test, CR’s testers aren’t there to describe whether or not they personally enjoyed the sandwich, but to evaluate the various facets of the sandwich: Is the coating crispy? Is it real white meat or reformed? How fatty is the bacon?

By answering these questions, CR gives you the over-all picture of the Double Down and lets you decide whether or not it’s something you’d want to plunk down $4.99 on.

CR plans to send off a few Double Downs to the lab for a nutritional analysis — My guess, it will come back saying, “Ingredients = 100% table salt.”